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A group of civil society groups in Delta state, yesterday protested against series of unaccounted loans, mostly the recent N120b secured by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.
The group barricaded the Agbarho axis of the ever busy East-West Road insisting the outgoing governor had an agenda to milk the state dry for his Vice Presidential ambition.
Staging the peaceful protest under the aegis Coalition of Civil Society, the protesters, including students as well as Agbarho community indigenes in Okpe Council area, took to the major expressway that transversed the community at about 10am, forcing a hitch on vehicular movements on the high way.
Notable among the inspiration on the banner displayed read; ‘We Say No To Okowa’s Plan To Mortgage Our Future’, ‘Enough Is Enough of Okowa’s Evil Agenda’, “We Reject Okowa and His Cabal Plot To Impoverish Deltans”, ‘Render Account Of the Loans So Far Received’, ‘We Demand EFCC, ICPC Probe of Delta Accounts’, among others.
They also announced the rejection of the Speaker, Delta state House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Sheriff Oborovwori, who is also the PDP governorship candidate in the forthcoming general elections, claiming he made himself a ready tool being used to impoverished the indigenes and made the state the highest indebted in the country.
Speaking with Journalists during the protest, the Convener, Civil Society group, Comrade Dr. Kelly Efemene said, “we have seen that the present Delta State Government is about to sell the people of the state for the future of their children”.
According to him; “a new bank allegedly own by the state governor is the bank about to release the one hundred and twenty billion naira to the state governor, Sen Okowa .
“Deltans are saying that any bank that gives loan to the state Governor Okowa will be doing it at is own because we Deltans are saying no to any load and will we continue to reject it”.
“There is no need giving another loan when you have not finished using the one already collected before now. All the money collected only one flyover was built and the other we have not seen”.
“Before Okowa became governor, as a student we have never paid a school fees above twenty thousand naira but today we are paying close to seven thousand naira as school fees”.
On his part, the national President of the Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) Comrade Prince Kehinde Taiga decried the under- development of the state in almost eight years of Okowa rule and demanded to know why the governor kept going for more loans when there was nothing to show for it.
“This kind of abuses can only be seen in government where the State House of Assembly had become a stooge and rubber stamped lawmakers who are only after their personal gains against the interest of the majority who elected them into office”, he stated.
